Tony Trehy is an international art curator and poet based in Manchester, UK.

March 01, 2017

Foreigners

There's been a spate of museum ‘what-to-do-about-Brexit’
conferences/briefings since the EU referendum - a symptom of the uncertainty which museums (and everyone else) faces at this time. A fundamental
problem for museums is that one of the founding values of their purpose,
liberal progress, faces its darkest threat since WW2. As
custodians of history, Museums (should) recognise more than most that we have
been here before - rising hate crime, xenophobia, populist nationalism/fascism,
and now Trump in the White House adding gangster capitalism and climate change
denial. Chinese military officials openly operate on the assumption of the
'practical reality' of Sino-US war and, even since I started writing this,
Putin has told the Russian air force to prepare for war. We now know what it
felt like in Germany in 1933. The barbarians are at the gate and this time we
have no excuse for ignorance – we have the lessons of history.

So what will the museums do? There’ll be rhetoric of more cultural
democracy, participation, increased access etc. Museums have been educating and
engaging with their communities for decades.... but their communities still voted
to leave the EU. In the same way, Bury Art Museum has presented its audience
with an internationalist programme for more than 15 years; its cultural aspiration
being that Bury people shouldn’t need to go to Berlin or Basel to see the best
international contemporary art, people in Berlin or Basel should have to come
to Bury. But Bury was also one of the towns in which the majority voted for
Brexit.

So what should museums do? Cultural
professionals often claim that it is a function of culture to challenge. In
truth, I can think of very few museums that ever really challenge. How often
have you left a gallery feeling challenged? And now culture faces an
existential challenge and it cannot fail to meet it. The assault on humanity,
decency, truth, even life on earth has been bewildering fast and, taken aback,
the response of civilised society has been slow and confused.

The International Committee for Museums (ICOM)
has a conference called 'Exhibitions Without Borders' this summer in Puerto
Rico - a dependant US territory and therefore subject to Trump's proposed ban
on Muslims entering the country. I asked ICOM what their position was going to
be on this as clearly the exclusion of Muslim museums would be an anathema to
the values of the organisation. ICOM and US-ICOM have announced that the ban is contrary to the values of museums, but is that enough? The US courts have knocked back the
Trump ban but this is no time for complacency, the Regime are coming back with
more bile. Maybe resistance is mobilising in the American Museums – I know that MOMA responded by showing artists from the banned countries and the Davis Museum in Massachusetts removed artworks by immigrant artists leaving
empty walls. So what can museums do? ('Community engagement', 'cultural democracy'
blah, blah, have their place, but don't face the crisis head-on).

Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre already
has an international programme; and in terms of challenging, it is
currently showing Riiko Sakkinen's critically sharp 'ABC of Capitalism', Juntae
Teejay Hwang uncompromising ‘Angry Hotel Propaganda’ (left) and JezDolan’s queer ‘Diary
Drawings’ and 60/50. But Brexit, Trump and rising racism require a specific
response. So this summer I’ll be curating an exhibition called ‘Foreigners’.

This won't be a show about immigration or refugees; it won't even be a show about foreignness. It won’t romanticise the Foreign
as Other. We are being told to fear foreigners, to hate them, to blame them for
any and every problem we face. The
Foreigners exhibition will be a cultural action that defies fear with hope.

It is my belief that
Museums should do more than collect/preserve history, they are part of the
process of making it; the narratives we lay down now form our future past. This
is a dark moment in history, the future of humanity and truth is at stake: Museums have to be on the right side of History.

1 comment:

good to see this active response Tony and one that seems to be gathering momentum across the world, a collective approach is building, and at Bury with a brilliantly direct exhibition title that engages the potential audience before they walk through the door... Imagination, dissent and hope - critically all are needed in fostering resistance. Articulating a refusal to scapegoat and making a public callout for dialogue, rejects this toxic 'othering' and encourages us as citizens to take and create actions together. Sally Labern